Posted
by
timothy
on Saturday February 11, 2012 @11:45AM
from the malice-aforethought dept.

First time accepted submitter colinneagle writes "Open source has been so successful in giving us software like Linux, Apache, Hadoop, etc., why wouldn't the open source method work with other types of software? Probably no one expected that the criminals behind vast malware trojans would adopt open source methods to make their malware more dangerous, but they have. According to this report from Seculert Research, the makers of Citadel, a variant of the Zeus Trojan are using open source models to hone their code and make the Trojan more dangerous."

Sort of anyway? Seems to that the networks of hackers and bad guy developers has always been sharing notes and code, and that this technique has long been used as an "intelligence amplifier" allowing a loose collection of bad guys who couldn't or at least didn't get real jobs to create some powerful malware tools. Which are often then used by someone else with slightly less coding sense and much more ambition to make some money, and to spread the idea of making money this way to others. The whole industry is a lot like multi-level marketing that way.

In addition, any code that's given away to do good can also do evil. Consider, for instance, nmap. It's great if you're trying to see how open you are to attack, or if you're trying to take down a power grid so Neo and Morpheus don't get killed, but it's also really handy if you're trying to determine the best vector for taking over a host.